Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Can't Find RyuTe in Oklahoma? Consider Seidokan

In some respects, I am remarkably fortunate. In the whole of Oklahoma, as far as I know, there are only a handful of RyuTe practitioners. There is one fellow way out in the Western part of the state whom I've not yet met, and I have no idea how many students he has. Probably not many. Looks to be a pretty rural area. And there is my own teacher, whose health issues make it quite impossible for him to take on more than the handful of students he has. He's said that if an association member from elsewhere in the country were to move into the area, he'd take him as a student, but otherwise...

I am lucky, very lucky, to be able to study RyuTe here. And I'm sure that there are people in Oklahoma who would love to be in my shoes, people who've heard of Taika Oyata and RyuTe and who would love to be able to study.

Well, I can't help those people. Not really. I am not a teacher. But I do have a suggestion: consider traveling down to Oklahoma City occasionally and studying Seidokan karate. Seidokan has some things in common with RyuTe. They are not identical; don't get that impression. But though Seidokan's tuite is different from RyuTe's, they at least have tuite; they have some very practical kata applications. There is even some lineage in common: Seidokan's founder, Sian Toma, received much instruction from Uehara Seikichi, headmaster of Motobu Ryu, and someone with whom Taika Oyata participated in a research group, if I'm not mistaken.